Eleven years ago, I went through the same fucking thing that I am going through right now. Which leads me to believe that, yes, we really are destined to make the same fucking mistakes over and over until we actually learn something.

Eleven years ago, I was going through a break-up with...wait for it...the same fucking person that I am going through a break-up with right now. Some people date the same kind of person until they learn from their past mistakes. But I was too lazy to go through the toil of getting to know another person, so I decided to just fuck things up with the same guy again. You know, really get in there and smash each other's hearts into tiny bits of mush.

Now, the last time we went through this shitty shittiness, I was a supple little 19-year old Lolita. Manboy and I decided to finally end things while I was home from college on winter break. The problem was, I was living with him when we decided this and had nowhere else to go. We had three weeks of emotional limbo in which we had horrible break-up sex and I did a lot of acid.

Back then, I really needed a friend to help me through the break-up and all of my friends were a thousand miles away. My best friend was the Manboy with tears in his eyes grasping me by the shoulders and saying, "It's over."

By the time I made it through the muck and mire of the separation, I realized that it was the unabashed wastefulness of youth that made me so pathetic and spineless. That's right. I did all the classic break-up bullshit. I cried a lot, wrote really bad poetry and listened to Ani Difranco.

See, I thought we could still be friends and care for each other to get us through the ordeal of separating our hearts. But, obviously, that behavior is counter-productive.

No longer a soldier of teenage naivete, but I am still trying to lean on a partner that is falling away. What's my fucking excuse?

I am a grizzled, embittered 30-year old woman on the verge of being single in Manhattan. Again. I'm terrified and confused and the one person who was beholden to fuck me no longer wants me. Yet, we're not at the point where we are allowed (allowed? allowed???) to have meaningless sex with strangers.

The problem is, again I am still living with the man that I will be leaving. We are a lot smarter about things this time around, but every once in a while, like last night for instance, I lose my cool. I found myself at a bar at three in the morning, drinking a martini I didn't want because I wanted to prove (to whom? to whom?) that I, too, could stay out all night and not call. Because...say it with me...We are not obligated to each other anymore.

I am still maintaining the values of monogamy and loyalty to a relationship that has an expiration date. Why? Why? Not just because we are living together still, though, yes, mainly because of that. But, also because...because...because my heart is fiercely incapable of admitting defeat.

The other parts of my body? Well. That's another story. Maybe.

Oh, and anyone who has a time machine that can transport me to the middle of this spring will have my undying devotion for all of eternity.